Cry wolf, p.1
Cry Wolf, page 1
International Praise for Cry Wolf
“Hans Rosenfeldt...is a grand master of his trade who knows how to skillfully build high tension.”
—Kleine Zeitung, Germany
“A suspenseful and well-written crime story.”
—Trønder-Avisa, Norway
“Packed with suspense.”
—Jyllands-Posten, Denmark
“Dense, spooky and really well written.”
—Politiken, Denmark
“Rich in characters, dark events and violence.”
—Smålandsposten, Sweden
“Suspenseful—page-turningly suspenseful.”
—DAST magazine, Sweden
Hans Rosenfeldt is a Swedish screenwriter and novelist. His books are published in thirty-four languages and have sold 5.5 million copies worldwide. Rosenfeldt created the Scandinavian series The Bridge, which is broadcast in more than 170 countries, as well as the ITV/Netflix series Marcella.
Cry Wolf
A Novel
Hans Rosenfeldt
Translated by Elizabeth Clark Wessel
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter Forty-Three
Chapter Forty-Four
Chapter Forty-Five
Chapter Forty-Six
Chapter Forty-Seven
Chapter Forty-Eight
Chapter Forty-Nine
Chapter Fifty
Chapter Fifty-One
Chapter Fifty-Two
Chapter Fifty-Three
Chapter Fifty-Four
Chapter Fifty-Five
Chapter Fifty-Six
Chapter Fifty-Seven
Chapter Fifty-Eight
Chapter Fifty-Nine
Chapter Sixty
Chapter Sixty-One
Chapter Sixty-Two
Chapter Sixty-Three
Chapter Sixty-Four
Chapter Sixty-Five
Chapter Sixty-Six
Chapter Sixty-Seven
Chapter Sixty-Eight
Chapter Sixty-Nine
Chapter Seventy
Chapter Seventy-One
Chapter Seventy-Two
Chapter Seventy-Three
Chapter Seventy-Four
Chapter Seventy-Five
Chapter Seventy-Six
Chapter Seventy-Seven
Chapter Seventy-Eight
Chapter Seventy-Nine
Chapter Eighty
Chapter Eighty-One
Chapter Eighty-Two
She lay on her side, held by moss and shrubs.
Gnats buzzed around her head, her breathing was labored, and oblivion was only a few breaths away. One eye stared up at the sky, at wisps of clouds with edges glowing pink and orange.
It was the warm time of the year. When the sky never goes dark.
She’d smelled the stench of infection for several days, but that wasn’t going to kill her. Nor was it starvation, the hunger. She was full now. For the first time in a very long time.
The wound refused to heal, no matter how much she tried to clean it. The pain and the warmth had spread up her leg. The pack had adapted to her pace. For a while anyway. Three of her young left with the others, but the smallest stayed behind with her. Doomed to destruction.
She couldn’t hunt anymore, and he’d never been taught.
The young moose who were easy prey in the light season were unattainable for now. Even the small prey escaped her. Too early for berries, which in an emergency stave off the worst of the hunger. Yesterday they’d found some meat, partially hidden, with an odor that instinctively told her to flee, but it kept them going. Up on the cliffs at the forest edge, they found more. Much more. Huge chunks, more than they could eat.
So she’d lingered on with her youngest until he slowed, whimpering, taking wobbly steps till finally he could no longer stand.
She’d stayed with him until she was sure he was dead, then kept going. Not far. The cramping and trembling made that impossible. She collapsed in the moss, lying on her side.
In the warmth. In the light. In the never-ending light.
Everything had gone according to plan.
First their arrival.
Be the first in place, park the jeep and black Mercedes beside each other on a rutted clearing in the middle of the forest, used by lumber trucks and harvesters for loading and U-turns, then position the coolers to face the narrow forest road they’d just come down. The ruts beneath them, the nocturnal birdsong around them, the only thing besides absolute silence until the sound of engines announced the arrival of the Finns.
A Volvo XC90, also black, drove up. Vadim watched as Artjom and Michail took their weapons and left the Mercedes, while he and Ljuba climbed out of their jeep. He liked Ljuba, thought she liked him, too. They’d gone out for a beer together a few times, and when they asked her who she wanted to drive with, she’d chosen him. For a moment he considered telling her to wait in the car, take cover, say he had a premonition this might go wrong. But if he did that, what would they do afterwards?
Run away together? Live happily ever after?
That would be impossible once she knew what had happened. She’d never betray Valerij; she didn’t like him that much, he was sure of it. So he said nothing.
The Volvo stopped a few meters in front of them, the engine switched off, the doors opened, and four men stepped out. All of them armed. Looked around suspiciously as they fanned out.
Everything was still.
The calm before the storm.
The Finnish leader, a large man with a buzz cut and a tribal tattoo wrapped around one eye, nodded to the smallest of the four Finns, who holstered his gun, walked behind the Volvo, and opened the trunk. Vadim also backed up a few steps to unlock his jeep’s trunk.
So far everything was going according to their plan.
Time for his plan.
A bullet from a rifle with a silencer on it entered just beneath the eye of the large Finn closest to the car. The sudden explosion of bone, blood, and brain matter as the projectile made its way through the back of his head made the others react instinctively.
Everyone started shooting at the same time.
Everyone except Vadim, who threw himself behind the shelter of the jeep.
The man with the tattoo on his face roared loudly, hugged his trigger, and immediately took down Michail with four or five shots to the chest. Artyom answered with gunfire. The tattooed man was hit by two bullets, staggered back, but regained his balance and turned his weapon on Artyom, who threw himself behind the cover of the Mercedes, but it was too late. Several bullets hit his legs from the hip down. Shrieking in pain, he landed on dry gravel. The tattooed man continued bleeding, roaring, and shooting as he moved toward the Volvo, determined to make it out of here alive. But a second later he fell to his knees gurgling, let go of his weapon, and pressed his hands to what was left of his neck.
Somewhere more shots were fired, more screams could be heard.
Artjom slid up into a sitting position, while trying to stop the blood that gushed from his thigh in the same rhythm as his racing heartbeat. Then another series of shots, and he went still, his gaze turning from desperation to emptiness, his lips forming some soundless word before his head slumped onto his chest.
The third Finn had thrown himself into the cover of a shallow ditch with a good view beneath the parked cars. A round of concentrated fire from his semi-automatic had hit Artjom in the back. Vadim realized that he, too, must be visible and flung himself around the jeep to hide behind one of its large wheels. When he got to the side of the car, he saw the smallest of the four Finns lying dead on the ground.
Ljuba wasn’t visible.
Another round of shots sounded from the ditch at the forest edge and bullets hit the metal on the back of the wheel, puncturing the tire. One went through the rubber and hit him in the side, just above his butt. The pain was a white-hot flash through his body. He closed his eyes, swallowed a scream, leaned his forehead against his knees, and made himself as small as he could. As he slowly let the air in his lungs out again, he realized the gunfire had ceased.
It was silent. Completely silent.
No movement, no voices, no roar of pain or betrayal, no birdsong, nothing. As if the very place itself were holding its breath.
He peeked out carefully from behind the jeep.
Still silent. And still.
Slowly, slowly he raised his head for a better view. The sun hung below the trees, but still above the horizon; the scene in front of him was bathed in that particular soft, warm light of the midnight sun.
He rose cautiously to his feet. A bullet was still lodged in his muscle and tissue, but it didn’t seem to have damaged any vital organs. He pressed his hand to the wound. Blood, but no more than he could stop with a compress.
“Ljuba?”
Ljuba was leaning against the rear bumper of the Finn’s car, breathing shallowly, the front of her gray T-shirt beneath her jacket soaked in blood, the gun still in her right hand. Vadim assessed the damage. The blood was running out at a steady rate, so it hadn’t nicked an artery. No air bubbles, so her lungs were probably intact. She might very well survive.
“Who shot us?” she asked, out of breath, grabbing Vadim’s jacket with a bloody hand. “Who the fuck started shooting?”
“He’s with us.”
“What? What do you mean with us? Who is he?”
“Come on.”
He gently took the gun away from her, pushed it into his pocket before standing up, leaned forward and helped her to her feet. She grimaced from the pain of exertion but managed to stand. With his arm around her waist and her arm around his shoulders, they walked out into the open area between the cars. When they reached the rise where the tattooed Finn had fallen, Vadim stopped, gently removed Ljuba’s arm, released his supportive grip from around her waist, and backed away with two large steps.
“I’m sorry...”
Ljuba’s gaze was uncomprehending at first, but she soon realized what was happening, why he’d brought her here. Seconds later a bullet pierced her temple and she was thrown to the ground.
Vadim pressed his hand to the wound on his lower back and stretched, let out a deep sigh.
In the end, everything had gone according to plan.
The city was waking up.
As she always does. Always has.
The Treaty of Fredrikshamn in 1809. One signature and Sweden lost a third of its territory, a quarter of its population. The Czar of Russia took Torneå, the largest trading center in the region, and a new border was drawn down the middle of the river. Suddenly Sweden had no city in the area. You need one, everyone agreed, but where should it be? The proposals were numerous, the discussions long. While they were trying to make up their minds, she waited patiently and grew, from a village with a few farms to a small market town, and finally she received her city charter in 1842. The year she was born.
Haparanda is named after Haaparanta, the Finnish word for Aspstrand.
Good years followed, when she grew so fast she creaked. Things always went better for her when they were going badly somewhere else. Being a neutral city near a border during a world war had its advantages. Now and then she was the only gateway open to Russia. The eye of the needle between east and west.
Material, letters, products, people.
Legal, illegal, living, valuable, dangerous.
The world’s traffic went through her, no matter what. She prospered. Thrived.
She’s a little more tired these days. She’s definitely calmer. Slowly she’s shrinking. Not in any dramatic way, simply a case of more people dying and leaving her every year than were born or moved in.
She knows her people. Shares their lives, sees and knows. Remembers and waits. She needs them all. She’s a city, exists only as long as people choose to live in her. Like a god who disappears the moment no one believes anymore.
So she welcomes the new ones and grieves for those who disappear, while quietly and patiently lying beside the river’s eternal flow.
There were plenty of parking spaces to choose from, so Hannah took the one closest to the sporting goods store, climbed out of the car and looked around while tucking her shirt into her uniform. After she left the police station she’d had a hot flash, and even though it only lasted a minute, her face still felt hot and sweat still ran down her back.
The weather wasn’t helping.
The thirteenth day of sunshine and temperatures over twenty degrees Celsius, unusually warm for mid-June this far north. Weather like this also meant this shopping center next to the E4 highway—dozens of stores lined up hoping the appeal to nearby Ikea customers—was less busy than usual. Not going too well for them today, Hannah noted, as she made her way to the entrance of the sporting goods shop.
It was cooler inside the store. A few customers were scattered between the round steel racks beneath signs announcing 40–70 percent off the clothes that hung on them. Hannah raised a hand in greeting to the woman behind the cash register. Didn’t know her, but knew who she was. Tarja Burell, married to Harald, younger brother of Carin at the reception desk. Her greeting was answered with a nod toward the interior of the store. Hannah saw immediately why she was here.
A young man, she recognized him, too. Jonathan, or Jonte for short, but she couldn’t quite recall his last name at the moment, which meant he wasn’t one of the most frequent guests in their detention cells. She continued down toward the stacks of shoeboxes, in front of a wall where shoes were displayed according to their sizes. The young man took a few swaying steps toward a couple in their thirties who were doing their best to avoid him without giving him the satisfaction of chasing them away; in other words, they were pretending he wasn’t there.
“How about we have a little chat?”
Jonte turned to Hannah. If the waxy face and jerky movements hadn’t told her already what she was dealing with—a man suffering from severe withdrawal symptoms—then the enlarged pupils would have left her with little doubt. Heroin, probably. Or Subutex. Supply and therefore abuse had increased significantly in recent years.
“What?” the young man said with an affronted sniff.
“I just want to have a little talk, follow me outside.”
“I didn’t do anything wrong.”
“We’ll discuss that. Outside.”
She put her hand gently on his shoulder, and he jerked it away so violently that he almost lost his balance and had to take a step back in order not to fall.
“Get your fucking hands off me. I’m only asking for money,” the young man said with a dismissive shrug. “Begging. That’s not...that’s not a crime.”
“OK, but when you don’t get anything, what do you do then?”
“What do you mean?”
Hannah could see him making an effort to focus his shifting eyes into an indifferent expression.
“You’ve been threatening to whip them.”
“Yes, but... I haven’t followed through—”
“No, but you can’t go around threatening people, so come with me now.”
She again put her hand gently onto his shoulder and the response was the same as last time, a fierce jerk backward that seemed to come as a complete surprise to the rest of his body.
“Take your fat fingers off me.”
“OK,” Hannah said, releasing his shoulder. “Are you coming then?”
“Yes, but don’t touch me.”
Hannah took a step aside and gestured with her arm that he should go first. He slowly made his way on unsteady legs toward the exit. As they passed by a bin of store-brand underwear, he reached out and grabbed a few packs, tried to push them inside his thin jacket.
“Seriously?” Hannah asked him tiredly. “You think I left my guide dog outside?”
“What?” Jonte replied, missing her point completely. Hannah sighed, grabbed the underwear and threw it back into the bin. A curt push on his back meant she’d had enough now. The man seemed to understand and headed to the exit without further protest.
When they stepped out into stark sunlight, he paused and raised his hand to shade his sensitive eyes. Hannah gave another little push that steered him in the direction of her parked police car. Halfway there he stopped, put one hand to his stomach and folded slightly forward. Large beads of sweat broke out on his forehead.
